Book picks similar to
After the Fire by Jane Rule
fiction
lesbian
lgbt
queer
Empress of the World
Sara Ryan - 2001
Nic's had theatre friends and orchestra friends, but never just friend friends. And she's certainly never had a relationship.But on the very first day, she falls in with Katrina the Manic Computer Chick, Isaac the Nice-Guy-Despite-Himself, Kevin the Inarticulate Composer... and Battle.Battle Hall Davies is a beautiful blond dancer from North Carolina. She's everything Nic isn't. Soon the two are friends - and then, startlingly, more than friends. What do you do when you think you're attracted to guys, and then you meet a girl who steals your heart?
The Last Nude
Ellis Avery - 2012
In the heady years before the crash, financiers drape their mistresses in Chanel, while expatriates flock to the avant-garde bookshop Shakespeare and Company. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka.Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara's most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished—and coveted—works of art. A season as the painter's muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history's darkening tide.Inspired by real events in de Lempicka's history, The Last Nude is a tour de force of historical imagination. Avery gives the reader a tantalizing window into a lost Paris, an age already vanishing as the inexorable forces of history close in on two tangled lives. Spellbinding and provocative, The Last Nude is a novel about genius and craft, love and desire, regret, and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.
The Subtweet
Vivek Shraya - 2020
When Neela Devaki’s song is covered by internet-famous artist Rukmini, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But as Rukmini’s star rises and Neela’s stagnates, jealousy and self-doubt creep in. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, one career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the center of an internet firestorm.Celebrated multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya’s second novel is a stirring examination of making art in the modern era, a love letter to brown women, an authentic glimpse into the music industry, and a nuanced exploration of the promise and peril of being seen.
Primal Touch
Amber Jacobs - 2006
There, she crosses paths with a ruthless poacher and Leandra, a mysterious, feral woman with a dark past, who seems at one with the fierce felines she protects. In this charged, exotic, lesbian romance, Ashley is caught up in danger, a deadly vendetta, and the clash of two starkly different worlds. It changes everything she knows.(2nd, revised edition)
Fall on Your Knees
Ann-Marie MacDonald - 1996
Chronicling five generations of this eccentric clan, Fall on Your Knees follows four remarkable sisters whose lives are filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Their experiences will take them from their stormswept homeland, across the battlefields of World War I, to the freedom and independence of Jazz-era New York City.Compellingly written, running the literary gamut from menacingly dark to hilariously funny, this is an epic saga of one family’s trials and triumphs in a world of sin, guilt, and redemption.
Lucky Loser
Yolanda Wallace - 2011
Or at least that's how Sinjin Smythe sees it. Then she begins to fall for her friend and former doubles partner Laure Fortescue. Having had her heart broken by one player, Sinjin isn't willing to have it happen again. The talented but oft-injured Brit enters Wimbledon fighting her feelings—and struggling to resurrect her career.Laure Fortescue has fame, fortune, and a ranking inside the top ten. She has everything she ever wanted. Everything except Sinjin Smythe. As a rule, Laure doesn't date other players. A rule she would gladly break if it means winning Sinjin's heart.Both women reach Wimbledon desperate to claim tennis's crown jewel—Sinjin because it would be her greatest victory, Laure because it could be her last.Where does love fit in a game that only one can win?
Dare Truth or Promise
Paula Boock - 1997
Louie wants to be a lawyer and is an outstanding student. Willa lives in a pub and just wants to get through the year so she can graduate and become a chef. But they are completely attracted to one another when they first meet at a fast-food restaurant. Soon they fall in love fast and furiously, and everything the girls are sure of - their plans, their faith, their families, their identities - is called into question...
The Last Train Home
Blayne Cooper - 2003
In this tumultuous time, factory worker Virginia Chisholm hopes for more, but her dreams go up in smoke when a tenement blaze rips her family apart. Aided by Lindsay Killian, the street-wise, rail-riding drifter she meets in a charity hospital, Ginny follows the orphan train that has taken her siblings west. The desperate quest to reunite her family takes the young women from the slums of New York City to the farms of West Virginia and the bustling frontier beyond. This harrowing journey moves Ginny and Lindsay from one mishap and adventure to another. It also leads them from friendship to a tender and unexpected romance.
A Woman Lost
T.B. Markinson - 2013
She’s rich, beautiful, intelligent, and successful. None of this matters to her mom. Les-Bi-An. That’s all her mom sees.Even though Lizzie insists her mom’s antagonism does not bother her, Lizzie distances herself from her entire family. When her brother, Peter, calls her out of the blue to announce he’s getting married, Lizzie’s entire life changes drastically. Peter’s fiancée wants to bring the lesbian outcast back into the family. Will this desire cause Lizzie to lose everything dear to her?Sarah, Lizzie’s girlfriend, is ecstatic about this change in Lizzie’s personal life. Sarah, the hopeless romantic, wants it all, including settling down with the fiercely independent Lizzie.Can Lizzie be tamed? And can she survive her family and all of their secrets?
The Inn at Netherfield Green
Aurora Rey - 2019
It’s not how her career, or her life, is supposed to unfold. But necessity is the mother of invention and Lauren has a new plan. She’s going to spruce up the inn, turn the attached pub into a hot spot, sell it for a killing, and start her own advertising agency. Gin distiller Camden Crawley has a soft spot for the Rose & Crown, the pub where her parents and grandparents got engaged. But the opinionated new owner who wants to turn it into some trendy bed and bar? Not so much. The last thing she wants to do is stick her nose in, but that might be her best chance to save a place she holds dear. And boosting her new line of gin wouldn’t hurt either.
Peppermint Kiss
Marian Snowe - 2019
Tia’s lived with that awful name for her whole life, so it was just her luck that her college girlfriend would cheat on her on Christmas Eve. Twenty years later, when Tia unexpectedly inherits a distant relative’s Christmas tree farm, she thinks fate couldn’t be laughing any harder... Then the woman who broke her heart shows up on the farm’s doorstep with a half-frozen kitten and nowhere to go for the holidays. Meg Bartlett’s world fell apart when her girlfriend wrongfully accused her of being unfaithful. When she comes home for Christmas after a long time away, Tia is the last person she expects to see, but maybe now she’ll get the chance to set the record straight. That is, if Tia will finally believe her. And if Tia does...how can she possibly ever win Meg back? Best-selling author Marian Snowe brings you this sweet Christmas novella of second chances and holiday warmth.
Monoceros
Suzette Mayr - 2011
And although he felt terribly alone, his suicide changes everyone around him.His parents are devastated. His secret boyfriend's girlfriend is relieved. His unicorn- and virginity-obsessed classmate, Faraday, is shattered; she wishes she had made friends with him that time she sold him an Iced Cappuccino at Tim Hortons. His English teacher, mid-divorce and mid-menopause, wishes she could remember the dead student's name, that she could care more about her students than her ex's new girlfriend. Who happens to be her cousin. The school guidance counselor, Walter, feels guilty—maybe he should have made an effort when the kid asked for help. Max, the principal, is worried about how it will reflect on the school. And Walter, who's secretly been in a relationship with Max for years, thinks that's a little callous. He's also tired of Max's obsession with some sci-fi show on TV. And Max wishes Walter would lose some weight and remember to use a coaster.And then Max meets a drag queen named Crepe Suzette. And everything changes.
Pages for You
Sylvia Brownrigg - 2001
The seventeen-year-old, new to everything around her—college, the East Coast, bodies of literature, and the sexual flurries of student life—is shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her. When Flannery finds herself enrolled in a class with the remote, brilliant older woman, she is intimidated at first, but gradually becomes Anne Arden's student—Baudelaire, lipstick colors, or how to travel with a lover—Flannery proves an eager pupil, until one day learns more about Anne than she ever wanted to know.
Freshman Year
Annameekee Hesik - 2010
But when she orders French fries from the flirtatious Hot Dog on a Stick Chick, she gets more than deep-fried potatoes. Abbey tries to ignore the weird, happy feeling in her gut, but that proves to be as impossible as avoiding the very insistent (and—rumor has it—very lesbian) players on Gila High’s girls’ basketball team. They want freakishly long-legged Abbey to try out, and Abbey doesn’t hate the idea. But Kate made Abbey pinky swear to avoid basketball and to keep away from the you-know-who girls on the team.Sometimes promises can’t be kept. And sometimes girls in uniform are impossible to resist.